Wednesday, April 28, 2010

It List: Wednesday

I could have finished this much earlier, however, I spent a long time cleaning up HTML on the entries submitted to our shows page. I don't mind stupid fonts and a little style, or lack thereof, here and there. If you want your show announcement to look stupid, then have at it. But making your letters six inches tall and the like, come on. That being said, I appreciate your participation in making the shows page often include shows that aren't listed elsewhere, even if it's not always the most comprehensive listing.

Also, personally insulting Jaime-Paul Falcon* in your show description is a little much. If you want to take a shot at the most tactful man in local music, you go ahead and be a man and do it as an anonymous commenter. He really hates that. I heard he was one of a few writers that was all over us at some panel during NX35, where according to the panel's host, Sam Machkovech, the lineup was loaded with writers that "loathed We Shot JR."

I have always loved the whole journalist VS blogger argument. Remember, the onus is not on the blogger to prove that he or she is a journalist. The pressure is on journalists to prove they can behave increasingly like bloggers, in order to save archaic business models. I wouldn't be surprised if they had meetings with topics such as, "How To Sound Casual," "Snarkiness 101," and "Illegal House Shows: A Primer."

When you have a journalism major that would much rather be writing about city hall, or sports, or the restaurant business, or community gardens, well, they may not always have the same enthusiasm towards figuring out whether or not some band still has the same bass player, or whether or not a track should really be considered Cold Wave. There's no accountability for this stuff. It's always suspicious to me when a group of professionals has to sit around and waste their breath on why they are, in fact, professionals, and the amateurs are irrelevant.

People have every right to try to make their dreams come true and to try to apply their degree as they had envisioned it would be applied, but I just wish that music wasn't always the first casualty in "journalistic boot camp," where young writers are thrown to sink or swim. This happens since music is largely seen as unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but also as a definite draw and a money-maker, so they can't completely ignore it. But the lowest common denominator usually rules, and safe and accessible is forever favored over anything "challenging." Even in the case of the local music press eventually embracing "DentonDIY" very late in the game, they still mainly focused on the most melodic and straight-forward acts.

Hey, speaking of "amateur bloggers," did you know that Forest Family has already sold out of their first seven-inch? Their new record, by Lafayette, Colorado's Gauntlet Hair will be out in "late May/early June," according to the label.